A lot is made of the fact that the Bears did not upgrade their quarterback
options and that they lost their two starting receivers, replacing those men
with two castaways in Booker and Lloyd and a return specialist in Devin Hester
— who is still currently MIA.

What is missed in that analysis is that
they are unsettled at tailback — although they do have a great deal of eligible
talent — and that they lost a number of players on the interior of the
defensive line and all along the offensive line.

A team like Chicago will look to win the battles at the line of scrimmage and
wear teams down with defense and a strong running attack. With the losses
and questions at those key positions, it will be a stiff task for them to win
like they had been winning in 2005 and 2006.

Verdict: Addition by subtraction can only be taken so far — they took a
step back.

The Lions need a big year from Jon Kitna to be competitive in an improving divisionMatthew Stockman/Getty Images

Though they have sustained a good deal of negative press by targeting former
Buccaneers in free agency, the more troubling part of their offseason was what
they lost, as compared to what they gained. Several starters on offense
and defense departed for other teams.

While Detroit has been an
unsuccessful franchise in this decade, it is still difficult to replace that
many departed players in the short time frame of one offseason, particularly when
so few replacements arrived via free agency and the draft.

They are unsettled at running back, lost a member of their offensive line
and offensive mastermind Mike Martz, so it remains to be seen if their talented
receiving corps can compensate for those shortfalls and if Jon Kitna has another
miracle season up his sleeve.

However, head coach Rod Marinelli has a
sterling reputation and seems to have the team guided in the right direction, so
it will be up for the 2008 season to decide whether or not the Lions lost too
much ground since the close of the 2007 season.

Verdict: They still lost too much and did not bring enough talent in
to fill the gaps, so they took a step back.

Although most of the offseason coverage has centered around the retirement
drama surrounding Brett Favre, it has, otherwise, been a very quiet period for
the Packers. They lost very little of consequence, getting trade
compensation from the Cleveland Browns for Corey Williams, and largely losing
role players and second stringers in free agency, while adding special teamer
Brandon Chillar.

With or without Favre, this is still a deeply talented and well-balanced team
that advanced to last year's NFC Championship game. They have lost very
little and, the Favre controversy aside, seem primed to be a quality team in
2008.

Verdict: They ran in place. For a team that finished 13-3 in
2007, that's a very enviable position to be in.

The Vikings were the darlings of the offseason and for good reason.
They added Allen to improve an already stellar defensive line in the hopes of
improving their pass rush and, by proxy, their pass defense in 2008.

They
already had the best run offense and best run defense in the league last season,
but struggled throwing the ball and stopping the pass, with some teams
completely abandoning the running game in favor of picking apart the secondary.

They still have the very green and untested Tavaris Jackson at quarterback,
but otherwise have the look of a playoff team. Whether or not they did
enough to improve since 2007 remains to be seen, but what cannot be argued is
that they tried everything they could to upgrade their roster for 2008.

Verdict: Chances are that Favre won't be wearing purple in September,
but they still took a big step forward heading into this season.